Search - Hugo Friedhofer, Max Steiner, Victor Young :: Murder and Mayhem: Suites from The Lodger (1944 Film) / The Beast With Five Fingers (1946 Film) / The Uninvited (1944 Film) [3 on 1]

More beautiful than spooky

F. Behrens | Keene, NH USA | 10/19/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A character in "Private Lives" comments how potent cheap music can be. Noel Coward might have written the same about "movie music." . Some of the most unlikely films have some really good scores and Marco Polo has already proven that in some of their fairly recent CDs of music from such horror films as "House of Frankenstein" and "The Wolf Man"! In the same tradition, we now have their (8.225132) with suites from the scores of "The Beast With Five Fingers" (Max Steiner), "The Lodger" (Hugo Friedhofer), and "The Uninvited" (Victor Young). The surprise of this collection is that much of the scores are not "spooky" but rather lovely. Now notice that these are arrangements and reconstructions from the original scores and as such are played by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra under William T. Stromberg. Very listenable and while not as much fun as the earlier sets, much more passionate. With a title like "Murder and Mayhem," go figure!"